Shadows
by Penthesilea
Summary: After River makes an outburst that angers Mal, the crew must ask Zoe to shed some light on Mal's past.


Shadows  
  
"He'll be a hero. Your son."  
Zoe and Wash Warren, second-in-command and pilot of the run-down Firefly-class ship Serenity respectively, stopped dead. Simultaneously, the couple turned to look at the sudden intrusion into their conversation. Around the table, all movement stopped as the crew of Serenity stared at the young woman sitting next to the ship's doctor.  
River Tam put a hand over her mouth as she giggled softly. Her brother, Dr. Simon Tam, had the grace to blush on her behalf.  
"I'm sorry, Zoe, Wash," he stammered. "I - she..." His voice trailed off into embarrassment.   
"Zoe, there somethin' you wanna tell us?" Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the boat, had stopped with a fork halfway to his mouth. "We gonna have us a little Warren runnin' 'round the place?"  
Zoe and Wash just looked at each other with huge, uncomprehending eyes.  
"Oh, he'll be so cute!" gushed Kaylee, ship's mechanic, and youngest of the crew. "Can you imagine? Watchin' a kid grow up right here on Serenity?" She poked Mal. "Callin' you Uncle Mal?"  
"There'll be no callin' of Uncle Mal." Mal turned a beady eye on the beautiful dark-haired woman seated next to Kaylee, laughing into her napkin. He met Inara's eyes, but she only laughed harder.   
"A child?" Simon turned to Zoe with a bewildered look. "Don't you think this is a little...dangerous?"  
"He'll see danger. He knows danger like his own name. It doesn't touch him," whispered River. She looked up at the crew. "But I want to dance around the fire."  
The crew froze. Jayne Cobb, professional mercenary, looked over his shoulder at the oven behind him.  
"Ain't no fire here," he reported.  
"I think it's the medication, Captain," said Simon. "I only just changed it, and she might have a relapse before it starts to take effect. I'm sorry, I should have told you."  
"Relapse?" Jayne sat bolt upright in his chair. "Like, butcher's knife, kinda relapse?"  
"We can hope," supplied the apparently expecting father with a smile.  
"So what are you going to name the baobei?" asked Kaylee, her eyes alight.  
"There's no baby," said Zoe with a note of finality. She looked at her husband with a little guilt in her expression. "We've discussed it. We decided against it, for now." She reached over and took Wash's hand. "What with the life we live..."  
"If it's all the same, Zoe, I think I should examine you," said Simon. "Just in case."  
"We've been careful -"  
"But just in case -"  
"I don't think it's necessary -"  
"Zoe," said Mal and Wash at the same time. The two men looked at one another for a moment, then Mal waved for Wash to continue. Wash leaned over and whispered something in his wife's ear. River giggled, then stopped abruptly, apparently quite shocked. Zoe smiled at Wash, then nodded to the doctor.  
"Tomorrow, then?" she asked.  
"I'll have to check my schedule, but I think I have tomorrow free," he replied. Mal nodded.  
"Good. Now that that little incident's been cleared up -"  
"But it's never over, Mal. Do you think it ends if we win or lose?" River had leaned her elbow on the table, and was resting her head on her raised hand. It was a position none present had ever seen her adopt, but both Zoe and Mal started at it. Her voice was different; it held more conviction, and an inflection that sounded unnatural coming from her throat.  
"What did she say?" demanded Mal.  
"It must be her psychic abilities -" started Simon, but he was cut off by his sister.  
"She loved you," she whispered, her voice and body language back to normal, but she was staring Mal straight in the eye. "She didn't want to hurt you."  
"You get her under control, you hear?" Mal said sharply.  
"Mal..." Inara said placatingly.  
"Tzao gao," muttered Zoe.  
"She just couldn't live with the memories. She wasn't the Katie -" River's quiet mutterings were drowned out as Mal jumped to his feet.  
"Captain -" Simon got to his feet, but Mal was gone before he could say another word. River put her head under the table, breathing heavily.  
A heavy silence descended in the mess. Simon sat down and put his arm around his sister. For a few minutes, the crew sat in silence and discomfort. Finally, Wash stirred.  
"Anyone want to tell me what the guay that was about?" he asked. There were general expressions of bewilderment.  
"Looked to me like River was channelling for a moment there," offered Shepherd Book.  
"Channellin'?" asked Jayne.  
"Taking on the characteristics of another person."  
"Might've been that Katie person she mentioned," said Kaylee. "Cap'n didn't seem to wanna hear her name."  
"An old lover," said Inara.  
"That would be my guess," said Book.  
"Zoe? You know anythin' about her?" asked Kaylee.  
Zoe had been staring at River, and started when Wash touched her arm.  
"Sorry? What?"  
"D'you know anythin' about this Katie gu nian? Only you've known the Cap'n longer than any of us, so's I figure you're the only one who'd know," said Kaylee. Zoe stood up.  
"Kaylee, I'm sorry, but guan ni zi zi de shi qing," she said.  
"But we've already heard what River said," interrupted Inara. "We'll respect Mal's privacy, but the secret's already been broken."  
"He just don't like to talk about her, is all," said Zoe.  
"He doesn't like to talk about the past. Unless he told you in confidence, can't you tell us what you know?"  
"Yeah, we wanna hear the Cap'n's dirty secrets," piped up Jayne. Wash turned to him.  
"Please don't help us," he said.  
"Ching-wah tsao de liou mahng" muttered Jayne.  
"Hey! Ni bu gan kai ni de hwang chiang," snapped Kaylee.  
Zoe sat back down.  
"You just can't bring up the subject with the Captain. He won't mind you knowin', just he's...sensitive on the subject."  
"You can trust us," said Wash, with only a trace of irony.  
Zoe paused.  
"Well? You gonna tell us?" asked Jayne.  
"Fine. Her name was Katie Silver. She and the Captain were engaged during the war. She was from Shadow, too. They told me they met when she bought a horse off of his mom's ranch. She was a jockey, a damn good one, too. She and the Captain were together when the war broke out. They both enlisted in the Independent Army, and stayed together through the whole thing. He asked her to marry him about three years into the war, and they agreed to not marry 'til the war was over. About two years before the war ended, her unit was caught in an ambush on Argus. No one made it back, everyone was presumed dead."  
"Poor Cap'n," whispered Kaylee. Zoe shook her head.  
"That wasn't the end. He was a mess for the next six months, but he held himself together. Then the Independents retook Argus, you remember?"  
There was a mixed reaction. Book nodded.  
"It was a rather sudden takeover, if I remember correctly. The Alliance barely made it out, and what the Independents found..."  
Zoe nodded.  
"They didn't have time to destroy their base," she continued. "No time to destroy information, files, or transport the POW's they had there."  
"Katie's unit," guessed Inara.  
"They'd been held for six months. Only half of them were still alive. Katie was, but barely."  
"It was quite an embarrassment for the Alliance, I recall," said Book.  
"They'd tortured the POW's," Zoe said. "Katie was one of the worst off. They'd raped her, repeatedly. She spent a month in hospital, just for the psychological treatments. The Captain went to her as often as he could, but he had to be out in the field. It killed him to be away from her, knowing what she'd been through. But, the Independents were desperate for troops, so two months later she volunteered to stay in the Army."  
"She should have been discharged," said Simon.  
"Don't I know it. But they accepted her back, even though the Captain tried to tell her to take the discharge and run. Every time he came back from leave with her, he just looked older and older. He had to take care of her, see, and when someone's been tortured..."  
"It's not the physical that matters, it's the psychological," finished Simon.  
"Right. And he had to deal with the psychological. See how it had changed her. Then, three months after she goes back out, both hers and our unit was sent to Hera. Serenity Valley. Her sergeant died within the first five minutes, so she was under the Captain's command, along with my unit. She survived the battle, but she was...brutal. No mercy. She even scared me. The Captain was the only thing that could calm her down. I found them, one night about a week in, where she was crying on his shoulder. Next day, she wasn't any different from the day before. When the battle ended, we were stuck there during the negotiations of surrender. There was a rumour goin' round that the Alliance was gonna take us prisoner. No truth to it. But she freaked. She was terrified. Then, one evening, I found her walking the trenches, barely caring whether she was shot or not, just looking at all the bodies. She kept looking at her hands, which were covered in dirt, and not a little blood. Next morning, after the sunrise, we hear a gunshot. Mal comes running, and finds her with his pistol in her hand. She was lyin' on her back, so all you could see was the blood in her hair, but besides that she looked normal. Then he picked her up, and all her hair was covered in blood and brains."  
"Wu de ma," whispered Kaylee.  
"That was kind of the end of it for him," said Zoe.  
"He loved her," said Simon.  
Inara stood and quietly left the room. Wash took his wife's hand. She squeezed it, and smiled at him.  
"Millennium hand and shrimp," offered River.  
"Simon?" said Zoe.  
"Yes?"  
"Tell us before you switch her meds again."  
Inara found Mal on the catwalk of the cargo bay, staring at the floor beneath him.  
"She told you, I assume?" he said.  
"We pretty much forced her to. Mal -"  
"I don't want to discuss it."  
Inara walked up to him and stood beside him.  
"Was she why -"  
"No." He looked her in the eye. She turned away first.  
"All right," she said. She started to walk toward her shuttle.  
"Inara?"   
She stopped and turned back.  
"Yes?"  
"Can you -" He was having difficulty with the sentence, but he managed to get it out. "Can you tell the doc I'm sorry I snapped at him?" It came out as a tense, hardly contrite sentence, but she understood.  
"Of course."  
He smiled, barely, but it was a real smile.  
"Xei-xei."  
And she understood that, too.  
  
Author's Note:  
"Millennium hand and shrimp" is a phrase from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.  
I'm sure you got the Chinese phrases from the context, but here are the translations:  
baobei - baby  
tzao gao - oh, shit  
guay - hell/devil  
gu nian - woman  
guan ni zi zi de shi qing - mind your own business  
ching-wah tsao de liou mahng - bastard who is humped by frogs  
nu bu gan kai ni de hwang chiang - don't talk so nastily  
wu de ma - mother of God  
xei-xei - thank you  
  
Disclaimer:  
Firefly belongs to Joss Whedon. 


End file.
